f the other.

So all morning, all afternoon, all evening, Rose sat by herself in the
room looking on the pavement. She had nothing to do in this house that
didn't belong to them. When she had helped the little untidy servant to
clear away the breakfast things; when she had dusted their sitting-room
and bedroom; when she had gone out and completed her minute marketings,
she had nothing to do. Nothing to do for herself; worse than all,
nothing to do for Tanqueray. She would hunt in drawers for things of his
to mend, going over his socks again and again in the hope of finding a
hole in one of them. Rose, who loved taking care of people, who was born
in the world and fashioned by Nature to that end, Rose had nothing to
take care of. You couldn't take care of Tanqueray.

Sometimes she found herself wishing that he were ill. Not dangerously
ill, but ill enough to be put to bed and taken care of. Not that Rose
was really aware of this cruel hope of hers. It came to her rather as a
picture of Tanqueray, lying in his sleeping-suit, adorably helpless, and
she nursing him. Her heart yearned to that vision.

For she saw visions. From perpetual activities of hands and feet, from
running up and down stairs, from sweeping and dusting, from the making
of beds, the washing of clothes and china, she had passed to the life of
sedentary contemplation. She was always thinking. Sometimes she thought
of nothing but Tanqueray. Sometimes she thought of Aunt and Uncle, of
Minnie and the seven little dogs. She could see them of a Sunday
evening, sitting in the basement parlour, Aunt in her black cashmere
with the gimp trimmings, Uncle in his tight broadcloth with his pipe in
his mouth, and Mrs. Smoker sleeping with her nose on the fender. Mr.
Robinson would come in sometimes, dressed as Mr. Robinson could dress,
and sit down at the little piano and sing in his beautiful voice, "'Ark,
'Ark, my Soul," and "The Church's one Foundation," while Joey howled at
all his top notes, and the smoke came curling out of Uncle's pipe, and
Rose sat very still dreaming of Mr. Tanqueray. (She could never hear
"Hark, Hark, my Soul," now, without thinking of Tanqueray.)

Sometimes she thought of that other life, further back, in her
mistress's house at Fleet, all the innocent service and affection, the
careful, exquisite tending of the delicious person of Baby, her humble,
dutiful intimacy with Baby's mother. She would shut her eyes and feel
Baby's hands on her n